I have been having a lot of issues with my water bottles for my rat/mouse bins. We are currently using 3 of the DIY bins from Frankykeno, and apart from our crappy bottles, they seem to work well. We are also using an old hamster cage of ours, with its own built in water bottle which works wonderfully.

My issue is that sometimes the water works fine, sometimes it is completely dry. It seems like the ball gets stuck up too far and stops the water flow, and it is too far up for the mice to fix it.

2 of the bottles def. work better than the other ( from tractor supply, the more faulty one is form Pet supplies plus). The two from TSC work just fine if I can keep them perfectly vertical, or lay the bottle kind of at a diagonal with the stem of the sipper pointed downward, but I cant get that position right on its own for the bins. The other bottle just seems to suck as I have already returned one, but without the receipt I was only able to exchange for another, big surprise, crappy water bottle.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. If I can make enough money, I am considering building a small rack, in which case I may spring the extra dough to put together a simple gravity water system with some valves. This is really frustrating me, and I am starting to wonder if the few mice we have lost even after pinky stage were because of lack of water rather than simply being sickly.